current in our day, because I believe that it cuts the sinew of our
Christian faith and destroys the chief dynamic in our missions. I
deplore the denial of our Lord's deity and atonement, the refusal to
address him in prayer, the ignoring of his promise to be with his people
even to the end of the world. To meet our needs in the conflict with
towering systems of idolatry and superstition, we need a supernatural
Christ; not simply the man of Nazareth, but the Lord of glory; not the
Christ of the Synoptics alone, but also the Christ of John's Gospel; not
a merely human example and leader, but one who "was declared to be the
Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead"; not simply
Jesus according to the flesh, but "the Word who was with God and who was
God" in eternity past; not simply God manifest in human life nineteen
centuries ago, but the God who is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and
forever"; not simply the humbled, but also the glorified Saviour, who
sits now upon the throne of the universe, all power in heaven and earth
being given into his hand. When we believe in an ascended Lord at God's
right hand, the God of Creation, of Providence, and of Redemption, we
have a faith that can conquer the world. Without such a faith in the
omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent Christ, we are weak as water in
the conflict with heathenism. We may set up Christ on a pedestal, in a
pantheon like that of Mrs. Besant, with a statue of Krishna by his side,
and the Hindu will laugh at the claims of the gospel. Only faith in
Christ as very God can meet the demands of the hour. "The spirit of man
is the candle of the Lord." In every age Christ has lit that candle, so
that it has given some light. But all who have come before him,
pretending to be the Light of the world, have been thieves and robbers,
stealing from Christ his glory and from man his blessing. Christ alone
can so enlighten us that we can be light and can give light. Let us
arise and shine, because our Light has come, and the glory of the Lord
has arisen upon us!
XVIII
MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES
No result of my travel has been more valuable to me than the new
impression I have received of the effect of missions upon missionaries.
I came abroad with a lingering idea of my youth that missionaries were a
class by themselves, a solemn set, destitute of humor, and so absorbed
in their work as to be narrow-minded. On the contrary, I have found them
joyful and even hilarious, broad in their views and sympathies, lovers
of the good in literature and art. The mental and spiritual growth of
students who left me years ago for a foreign field has greatly surprised
me. Then they were boys; now they are men. The demands of the missionary
work have drawn out their latent powers; they have found their new
environment immensely stimulating; contact with new lands and people has
widened their outlook; they have become thinkers and leaders of men.
It takes an all-round man to be a good missionary. The learning of a
foreign language in which one has to construct his own grammar and
lexicon requires persistent effort of the most disciplined mind. The
missionary is often called upon to build his own house or church. He
must be both architect and supervisor, for his masons know no English,
and are bent on slighting their work. He has servants who steal and
coolies who lie. He establishes, manages, and governs a native school,
and generally has to evolve his own pedagogy. He comes into relation
with English officials, American consuls, and native functionaries, and
is obliged to know something of social customs. In fine, he is a jack of
all trades, besides being a preacher of the gospel who must adapt his
message to the understanding of the illiterate multitude and of the
cultivated man of caste as well.
All this gives the missionary a training beyond that of any university
course. Herbert Spencer asserted that a nation makes progress in
civilization in proportion to the variety of its environment. The
principle applies also to the development of the individual. Our
missionaries thought perhaps that they were leaving culture behind them,
when they left America for barbarous lands. But losing their lives for
Christ's sake they found to be mental gain. Even on the Congo our men
have learned more, and have developed stronger characters, than would
have been possible if they had accepted ordinary pastorates at home. And
they have not lost, but have won, that fine flavor of sanity and
judgment, which belongs to men who have had large experience of life.
So far, I have referred only to the intellectual side of one's
education. The spiritual equipment is even more important. In heathendom
one comes in contact with towering systems of idolatry and superstition,
venerable with age and rooted deeply in the nature and habit of the
people. The Christian teacher realizes that, in his conflict with these
systems, he is powerless, unless backed by Omnipotence. He is thrown
upon the divine resources, and learns, perhaps for the first time,
that, while apart from Christ he can do nothing, with Christ he can do
all things. A new experience of the presence and power of the Saviour
comes to him. The struggle that at first taxed all his energy is at last
a glad walk over the course in the strength of Christ. Anxiety and fear
have taught him lessons which he could not otherwise have learned. He
has become a hopeful and joyful Christian.
All this tends to render the missionary doctrinally sound.
Evangelization makes men evangelical. When you tell the gospel to a
heathen sinner, you must put it in the simplest terms, or he will fail
to understand it. Your effort to reach his mind and heart clarifies your
own. To one condemned and lost, no mere human example in Jesus will
suffice; you need an atoning Saviour. To one struggling with demonic
powers and helpless in their grasp, no mere man of Nazareth, no Jesus,
according to the flesh, will answer; you need the Lord of Glory, who was
declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the
dead. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit who regenerates, sanctifies,
comforts, and saves, becomes an indispensable element in preaching, and
so becomes ingrained into the preacher's confession of faith. A personal
and present Christ, Immanuel, God with us, is the source of the
missionary's power; he has practical proof that the Holy Spirit is
Christ in spiritual form, with his people alway, even to the end of the
world. The reality of God in Christ, manifest in nature, ruling the
world in providence, preparing the nations for judgment, sure to bring
the world to his feet, becomes an article of the missionary's faith, and
a constant subject of his teaching. The minimizing of Christ's nature
and claims has no proper place on missionary ground. The missionary
indeed is exerting an influence on the faith of the homeland equal to
that which he exerts upon the heathen abroad.
It is indeed true that here and there a man who has come out as a
missionary has been attracted and perverted by the very systems he
proposed to subdue, and has turned out a teacher of Buddhism instead of
Christianity. But such men had never the root of the matter in them, had
never felt the galling yoke of sin, had never known the joy of Christ's
salvation. They had gotten their preparation for evangelistic work from
American teachers of comparative religion, who put Buddha on the same
plane with Christ. The result has only shown the impotence of a man-made
gospel to combat heathenism, or even to save the souls of those who
preach that sort of gospel. In a sense precisely opposite to that of the
apostle Paul, they have come to be opposers of the faith they once
proposed to advocate, and destroyers instead of builders of Christian
civilization. All this is a lesson to our missionary societies and
churches at home. The colleges and seminaries which permit indefinite
and unevangelical doctrine to be taught, and which retain those who
teach it upon the ground that liberality in theology is a duty, merit
the censure of God and man; for the school or the church that ceases to
be evangelical will soon cease to be evangelistic, and when it ceases to
be evangelistic it will soon cease to exist. In this way missions are
the testing-places of Christian doctrine.
In a similar way New Testament polity is showing its power in our
foreign work. At home we are getting to be lax in our reception of
members, and are taking in numbers of persons without proper evidence of
their conversion. Baptist churches which used to examine carefully their
candidates for admission now receive them without public and oral
confession of their faith. Yet these new members may vote, and may
determine the attitude of the church in important exigencies. All this
is avoided in our mission churches. They perceive the necessity of
keeping out the unfit, as clearly as that of admitting the fit. They do
not add to their membership by infant baptism, and they make sure that
no pecuniary considerations influence professing converts. Our Baptist
mission churches are fast becoming models of self-supporting,
self-governing, and self-propagating bodies. Missionaries find that
their only safety lies in hewing close to the line of New Testament
requirement. Their success in building up Baptist churches in Burma and
among the Telugus, keeps our missionaries faithful to the New Testament
model of church polity. They have the joy of seeing churches organized
on scriptural principles, and shedding their light upon the regions of
darkness around them.
I wish to say something also about the physical environment of our
missionaries and its influence upon them. I remember that half a century
ago I called upon Doctor Thompson of Beirut, the veteran missionary of
the American Board in Syria. I would not have been surprised if I had
found him living in a hut, for my ideas of missionary hardship were
very crude. But I was surprised to find him living in a great stone
mansion, with twice as many servants as we ordinarily have at home. It
has taken me some time to learn that in a hot country a cool and
spacious house is a primary necessity of life, if the missionary expects
to endure a climate where the thermometer at times goes up beyond a
hundred degrees and stays there. And ordinary comfort cannot be obtained
without servants to do your cooking and running. The large house can be
built for half the cost of such a structure at home, and the servants
can be obtained for only a few cents a day for each one. Remember that
in many cases the missionary has not only to be his own physician and
surgeon, but also the physician and surgeon of others; that his house is
often a hospital as well as a gathering-place of inquirers. Remember,
too, that the missionary's wife has not only to perform the household
duties of a wife at home, but in addition has probably to be the
supervisor of a girls' school and the only school-teacher and
music-teacher that her children will know until they are old enough to
go to the homeland. Remember these considerations, and you will see that
a decent home is essential to a missionary's success in a heathen land.
Our missionary work, like our diplomatic service, has been too long
discredited by our insufficient care for our representatives abroad.
Our friends of other denominations are greatly ahead of us in this
matter of provision for their missionaries. Not only are the bungalows
built for their residences better than ours, but their plants of church
and school buildings show a larger outlook for the future than ours
show. The English Baptists, the Congregationalists, the Methodists, the
Church of England, yes, even the Theosophists and Buddhists, furnish
object-lessons to us in this regard. And yet, such has been the
inventiveness and large-mindedness of our missionaries themselves, that
in all the great centers of our work, they are housed better than the
average pastors of our churches at home. I wish we could double their
strength by the establishment of summer rest-houses in the hills, and by
presenting every one of them with a motor-car. But even now, the days of
extreme hardship are past, and no man of ordinary vigor need fear coming
to the foreign field on account of its physical discomforts.
When our Lord sent out his first missionaries, he sent them two by two.
The real trial of the missionary is more mental than physical. He
greatly needs companionship. Silence in the midst of the beating of
heathen tom-toms becomes enervating and appalling; it may make a man
insane. We are learning the value of team-work in missions. What one man
alone could never accomplish, he can do with the help of others. The
American Board in its mission at Madura, India, has acted upon this
principle, and the result is seen in an aggregate of twenty-two thousand
church-members. Our own most successful work has been among the Burmans
and Karens, where we have seventy thousand members, and among the
Telugus, where we have as many more. In these fields there are enough
workers to constitute a homogeneous society, with frequent conferences
to help the discouraged and to stimulate the weak. Let us be generous
in providing additional helpers and furloughs to men so far removed from
our Christian civilization.
But let no one go to the foreign field expecting to get all his strength
from his brethren. Missionary work is no sinecure. It requires not only
a sound body and a sound mind, with a cheerful and hopeful temperament,
but also a willingness to endure hardship for Jesus' sake, and, if need
be, with him alone for helper. There are more alleviations of missionary
conditions than were known in its early days, but they still require
self-sacrifice. Separation from home and friends, and, for the pioneer,
days of unspeakable loneliness, are the missionary's portion. The
necessity of sending children to America, so that they may escape
disease and immorality among the heathen, is an agony which only the
affectionate parent can know. Opportunities for usefulness which cannot
be seized, because of lack of reenforcement from the homeland, involve a
"hope deferred that maketh the heart sick."
When Paul went to Athens he probably hoped to win the philosophers to
Christ's standard. But the Stoics and Epicureans scoffed at him. He had
to content himself with the multitude of commoner converts at Corinth.
It was doubtless God's sovereignty that determined the result, but God's
sovereignty is also wisdom. It took Paul a long time to learn that God
builds his fires from the bottom, and ordinarily kindles the small
sticks first. "Not many wise, not many noble hath God chosen," but the
weak things first, "that no flesh may glory in his presence." Here is
one of the trials of missionary life, and one of the tests of
missionary faith. Can the missionary welcome the conversion of a
multitude of low-class people, like the Madigas, when their acceptance
becomes to the proud Brahman an evidence of the ignoble character of
Christianity? Yes, he can, if he has faith in God. He can wait on God,
and wait for results.
He builded better than he knew,
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
The great Sudra class, a class higher than the Madigas, under the
influence of Christianity, is becoming more intelligent and more
influential than the Brahman, and is gradually taking from him his
social prestige and his political power. Many missionaries are expecting
a great turning unto the Lord from among the Sudras. Meantime there is a
promise "to him that overcometh." "If we suffer with him, we shall also
reign with him." "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." And
When we reach the shore at last.
Who shall count the billows past?
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Inconsistencies in the hyphenation of words preserved. (sightseeing,
sight-seeing)
Pg. 39, unusual word "subtilty". Presumed to be "subtlety". (and the
subtlety of the Hindus)
Pg. 177, triple quote mark after "biblia," changed to double quote
mark. (the plural "biblia,")
In the original text, every chapter had a title page (containing
chapter number and heading) with a blank page on the reverse. The page
with the main text then followed with a repeated chapter heading at
the top. Occasionally, there was also a blank page before the title
page. For tidiness, the title page of each chapter has been
transcribed but the repeated chapter headings have been removed.